Apparently, privacy laws are for other people, and not political parties. This according to Bill C-4.
Earlier, I wrote about Bill C-2 resurrecting lawful access, Canada’s multi-decade long warrantless wiretapping law that would allow police to demand subscriber information without a warrant. The Liberal party defended their action to completely destroy personal privacy in Canada by basically arguing that fentanyl is bad out there, so therefore, we should nuke Canadian privacy rights from orbit in response. The response was complete and utter nonsense, but since the Liberal party labelled this as a “border security” bill, then the destruction of our civil rights is automatically OK and we should just accept the new reality of living in a police state complete with no civil rights. Don’t you feel safer already?
Of course, this isn’t the only way in which the Liberal party has seemingly declared war on privacy rights. There’s actually a second effort in a separate bill that would completely destroy people’s expectations of privacy. That has to do with a separate bill known as Bill C-4. Bill C-4 is labelled as an “affordability measures” bill, but it contains provisions that would exempt political parties from having to follow those pesky little “privacy laws”. You can read the bill yourself here and quickly see that the nasty anti-privacy provisions are buried at the bottom of the bill in part 4. Here’s part of what it says:
Activities in relation to personal information
446.3 In order to participate in public affairs by endorsing one or more of its members as candidates and supporting their election, any registered party or eligible party, as well as any person or entity acting on the party’s behalf, including the party’s candidates, electoral district associations, officers, agents, employees, volunteers and representatives, may, subject to this Act and any other applicable federal Act, carry out any activities in relation to personal information, including the collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information in accordance with the party’s policy for the protection of personal information.
Provincial or territorial Act
446.4 (1) When participating in public affairs by endorsing one or more of its members as candidates and supporting their election, a registered party or eligible party, as well as any person or entity acting on the party’s behalf, including the party’s candidates, electoral district associations, officers, agents, employees, volunteers and representatives, cannot be required to comply with an Act of a province or territory that regulates activities in relation to personal information, including the collection, use, disclosure, retention and disposal of personal information, unless the party’s policy for the protection of personal information provides otherwise.
For greater certainty
(2) For greater certainty, the registered party, eligible party or person or entity acting on the party’s behalf cannot be required to provide access to personal information or provide information relating to personal information under its control or to correct — or receive, adjudicate or annotate requests to correct — personal information or omissions in personal information under its control.
If you think that’s bad, check out the related coming into force section shortly after:
Coming into Force
May 31, 200049 The headings before section 446.1 and sections 446.1 to 446.4 of the Canada Elections Act, as enacted by section 47, are deemed to have come into force on May 31, 2000.
So, basically, the rules would be retroactive clear back to the year 2000 on top of it all. It’s absolutely ridiculous what they are proposing here.
The question is, what does the government have to say about this? Apparently nothing. From Michael Geist:
The government is moving to eviscerate political party privacy in Canada as it fast tracks Bill C-4, proposed legislation framed as implementing affordability measures, but which also exempts political parties from the application of privacy protections on a retroactive basis dating back to 2000. The government moved to end second reading debate yesterday without a single Liberal MP speaking to the privacy provisions in the bill and is seeking to fast track hearings in the Senate so that it can be passed before Canada Day. The provisions give political parties virtually unlimited power to collect, use and disclose personal information with no ability for privacy commissioners to address violations. The bill drops earlier proposed requirements to disclose security breaches and restrict selling Canadians’ information and it blocks the application of provincial privacy laws. The bill’s provisions set a privacy standard for political parties (effectively limited to merely disclosing their privacy practices) that would be unthinkable for the private sector and establishes an unprecedented back-to-the-future approach of wiping out any potential accountability dating back decades.
Members of Parliament regularly emphasized that privacy is a fundamental human right when debating Bill C-27 during the last Parliament, calling for an explicit provision to that effect in the bill. Yet apparently those human rights stop when it comes to political parties and their use of personal information. Not only is the government burying anti-privacy provisions in the bill, but government ministers and MPs have avoided any debate on the issue. Minister François Philippe Champagne did not mention the provisions in his comments on the bill and no Liberal MP has dared raise it in the House of Commons.
Geist would later note that thanks to the fact that political parties are exempt from anti-spam laws, they have become the leading source for SMS spam complaints, taking up 60% of those complaints. It does lead one to think that if political parties are abusing their legal exemptions for spam, then it wouldn’t be that far fetched to think that they would happily abuse their ability to be above the law when it comes to privacy as well.
In an era where shady data brokers are happily buying and selling people’s personal information with impunity, right down to the precise real-time GPS coordinates of children, Canada should be gearing up to finally implement a federal level privacy reform package. This by following the lead set by Europe clear back in 2018. Unfortunately, politician’s seem to be allergic to basic common sense when it comes to privacy. In fact, as highlighted above, it seems that the Liberal party is asking what is basic common sense on the privacy front and doing everything they can to do the opposite.
Just a little heads up for bills submitted to Parliament (there isn’t really anywhere else to put this type of comment, apologies in advance):
1: Conservative MP Michelle Rempel Garner intends to reintroduce C-412 (new number pending), which is basically the Conservative version of C-63’s child safety provisions (and possibly doubles as an age verification bill).
2: The Liberals’ “Cybersecurity Act” (AKA: C-26), was reintroduced as C-8. Mr. Wilson, please remind your readers of what horrors await with this bill.
No worries. I saw your comment and was going to look at Bill C-8 for sure today, but only had enough time to find the bill (had a lot of things come up). It’s definitely a wordy one, but I definitely have it on my radar to look at. Thanks for the heads up.
Garner’s legislation is likely going to act as a private members bill. Those have a tendency of not getting very far in practice (though there are exceptions like the age verification bill from last session). If I have a chance, I’ll probably look at that as well – this as I juggle with other stories about how the whole world seems to be on fire right now. I’m a little spoiled for choice on big stories a lot of the time and under-resourced at the same time (hoping that will change sometime soon). :\